The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century:
Its Progress and Expansion at Home and Abroad,
Comprising a Description and History of the
British Colonies and Dependencies.
Volume II, Chapter X (pp 333-334.)
By Edgar Sanderson
Blackie & Son, Limited. 1897.
CHAPTER X.
DOMESTIC EVENTS OF THE CENTURY (Continued).
All mysteries of crime, not only for the reign,
but for the century, seem almost trivial
compared with the "Whitechapel murders", the
East-end atrocities, of the years betwen 1887
and 1891. During that period, at intervals of
time varying in length from a few weeks to some
months, and from months to nearly two years, at
least nine murders were committed, all, with
one exception, in the open air, at various
points in or close to the densely-populated
district called Whitechapel, in East London.
From the peculiar mode of slaughter adopted by
the assassin it may be safely averred that at
least eight of these crimes were the work of
the same hand. The victims were, in all cases,
women of the same fallen and unhappy class.
They were in all cases slain by the severance
of the throat. Their bodies were in all cases
mutilated in the same region, with the same
indescribable ferocity, by the use of a blade
with the keenest edge. No one who did not,
like the present writer, inspect the scene of
at least some of these fearful tragedies, can
appreciate the daring, the swiftness,
suddenness, and skill needed for successful
action and escape. In the darker recesses of
public thoroughfares under regular patrol of
the night-police; in back-yards of
lodging-houses teeming with persons whom a
single scream would have aroused; without a cry
from the slain; without a sight of the slayer
ever obtained, without a sound of his steps as
he went to or quited his loathsome work, the
deadly steel wrought deed after deed of the
most savage cruelty. The slashing of the
victims' flesh caused the vulgar to dub this
miscreant "Jack the Ripper". Not the faintest
clue was ever obtained. Like a fiend he came
and like a fiend he vanished, laughing man to
scorn in the loneliness of some secure retreat,
or exulting, in the depths of his wicked heart,
over his utter defeat of all the resources of
our boasted civilization for the detection of
crime.
